"It's going to get worse in high school," said one sixth-grade boy Wednesday in the Bluffton Middle School cafeteria. "The seniors end up picking on the freshmen."

So, what's a guidance counselor to do?

"I used to tell kids what to do," said Marcia Ramsdell, seventh grade counselor for the Mustangs.

Now, Ramsdell says, she asks them questions. The answers, she's found, have to come from them or it won't make much of a difference.

Teacher Catherine Wayland was charged with talking to a student who'd been giving someone a hard time.

"I asked her, 'What does it say about your character that you have to have an edge and you're going to play that edge?'" Wayland said.

She said the student thought about it, and said "That I take advantage of people that are weaker than me?"

Bingo.

"How do you feel about that?" Wayland said she asked next.

"I feel ashamed of myself," the student answered.

There's another way, another path besides feeling good by making others feel bad. And Bluffton Middle School teachers, counselors and leaders want so much to see every student model responsibility, academic excellence, honesty and respect that they're dedicating 25 minutes of each day to helping foster those traits.

"It's supposed to be a time when you could go to a grown up for help, but it hasn't really worked out that way," said seventh grader Ryan Hamby.

And yet when Kymberly Wojcik was being bullied on the school bus, she did go to Ramsdell, her PATH Time advisor, as well as to her parents. They worked together with parents of another bullied student, and the parents of the student who was bullying, to stop it.

"She didn't like the fact I didn't want to be her friend so she started bullying me," Wojcik said.

Principal Dereck Rhoads said that PATH Time helps the school feel a little smaller: It functions like a homeroom, where the advisor gets to know the students and ideally, where it's safe to talk about life in middle school.

"We expect our kids at 12 to do what we as adults sometimes struggle with," said Rhoads, such as being honest, standing up for what we know is right, accepting responsibility and apologizing when we're in the wrong; treating others the way we want to be treated - stuff like that.

Wayland said she had her 25 PATH Time students write their responses to prompts like: "To be more honest, I would need to ..." Together, the group shared their answers, and melded them together. Now, the honesty credo hangs in her classroom.

"I will always tell the truth, even when I'm scared. I will not dress up a lie and call it the truth. I will not get others in trouble with my lies."

Students who respect one another won't bully, but it's easier said than done: Wayland's class together came up with this Martin Luther King-like goal: "I need to respect myself and others even when I'm mad or they don't respect me."

Tony Henniger and Hamby said a lot of bullying starts out as light humor.

"Sometimes you're just teasing and it gets out of hand," Hamby said.

Both said that bullies don't target any one particular kind of student, but Alex Otton said that "a lot of it goes to people like me who are a little overweight. I don't feel like getting suspended, so yesterday there was a child in my gym class that walked up and slapped me and all I did was throw them."

"It doesn't bother me as much anymore," he said.

Still, bullies will always look to find an edge, a way to try to make themselves feel better by putting someone else down.

"They seem to like calling people gay," said Hamby.

"I think everybody bullies each other," said Savannah Oswald. "If the bully is your friend, then you don't want to say anything (to get them in trouble)," she said.

"But then they're not your true friend," said Mariah Mervin.

The girls said the more teachers are in the halls, the better, and that it would help if seventh and sixth graders were kept separate.

Whitney Murrow said she thinks the one thing that would stop bullying is "if more people stood up for other people."

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